Commentary - Eupsychian Theory I

Theoretical overview and assessment of my peer reviewed article “Eupsychian Theory I”

Original Article: Eupsychian Theory I: Reclaiming Maslow and Rejecting the Pyramid — The Circle of Seven Essential Needs Athens Journal of Psychology, 2025

What I Was Trying to Do

This article is the culmination of roughly fifteen years of thinking about what went wrong with humanistic psychology—and what Abraham Maslow actually intended before his work got flattened into the corporate self-help sloganeering we see today. I wrote it because I was tired of seeing Maslow’s pyramid used to justify everything from toxic workplace “motivation” seminars to pyramid-scheme wellness culture. The pyramid isn’t just wrong; it’s been weaponized.

My goal was twofold: destructive and constructive. Destructively, I wanted to demonstrate that the pyramid of needs was never Maslow’s mature theory—that it was a pedagogical accident that ossified because he lacked the knowledge technology to revise his published work in real time. Constructively, I wanted to offer something better: the Circle of Seven Essential Needs, a model that recovers the horticultural, holistic, and spiritual dimensions Maslow spent his final years developing.

What I Think Works

The historical recovery. I spent considerable time in Maslow’s published works, his unpublished papers, Hoffman’s biographical work, and the scattered revisions Maslow buried in obscure journals and conference talks. The evidence is clear: Maslow’s original conceptualization were inadequate and he knew it. He added needs continuously—cognitive, aesthetic, transcendence—and he increasingly emphasized that needs are not hierarchical but interdependent. The circle model captures this.

The political framing. I don’t pretend this is neutral psychology. The pyramid serves power. It tells people they must secure their “basic” needs before they can worry about ethics, community, or spirituality—which conveniently means the poor should focus on survival while the wealthy get to contemplate self-actualization. The circle says no: moral alignment and spiritual connection are not luxuries for the privileged; they are developmental necessities for everyone, and societies that deny them to populations are not “less developed” but actively abusive.

The cultural inclusivity. Replacing “self-actualization” with “alignment” was a deliberate move. Self-actualization sounds like Western individualism—climbing a mountain alone. Alignment resonates across traditions: the Buddhist concept of right livelihood, the Islamic notion of tazkiyah (purification), the Indigenous emphasis on harmony with community and land. I wanted a framework that doesn’t colonize by default.

The programmatic clarity. The article doesn’t just critique; it outlines next steps. I specify what an Eupsychian health assessment would look like, what abuse severity measures are needed, how psychedelic-assisted therapy fits in, and what institutional transformation requires. This connects to my broader work—the SpiritWiki, the Peace Table, Sociology 421—showing how theory becomes infrastructure.

What I Think Needs Work

The “murder” metaphor. I describe the marginalization of humanistic psychology as a “murder,” and I stand by the substance: Elkins (2009) documents systematic defunding, stereotyping, and exclusion. But the metaphor risks sounding conspiratorial to readers who don’t follow the footnotes. I try to clarify that I mean visible, multifaceted institutional processes—not cloak-and-dagger plotting—but I suspect some readers still hear “conspiracy theory” and disengage. A cooler framing might have reached more psychologists.

The tone. This is not a detached academic article. It is angry, urgent, and at times prophetic. That is intentional—I believe we are in a polycrisis and scholarly neutrality is itself a political stance—but it may limit uptake in conservative disciplinary spaces. I am okay with that trade-off, but I acknowledge it.

The empirical gap. The circle model is theoretically grounded in Maslow’s revisions, but it needs more empirical validation than I provide. I outline what validation would look like, but I don’t present new data. The next article in the series—Eupsychian Theory II: Eupsychian Therapy—will need to address this directly.

The scope inflation. I claim the framework can reconceptualize “every area of human knowledge” and provide “new systems of meaning where religion had so thoroughly failed.” This is what Maslow claimed, and I believe he was right, but saying it risks sounding grandiose. I try to ground the ambition in specific programmatic steps, but the rhetorical height may alienate readers who prefer modest claims.

Where It Fits

This article sits at the center of my research program. It connects backward to my work on scholarly communication, the sociology of religion, and toxic socialization—showing how psychological theory gets captured by power. It connects forward to the SpiritWiki (where the circle model is now the organizing framework for human development entries), the Peace Table (where I publish public-facing extensions), and my teaching (where Sociology 421 students engage with knowledge systems designed for Eupsychian ends rather than capitalist accumulation).

It is also, frankly, a personal statement. I was an undergraduate when I watched humanistic psychologists get replaced by behaviourists in my department. I have spent my career trying to understand why emancipatory knowledge keeps getting “murdered”—and how knowledge technology might prevent that. This article is my answer, so far.

Honest Bottom Line

Is it perfect? No. Is it important? I think so. It recovers a suppressed theoretical tradition, offers a constructive alternative, and links both to living projects that extend beyond the journal page. For a world drowning in pyramid-shaped self-help and algorithmic manipulation, I believe we need the circle.

Mike Sosteric is a professor of sociology at Athabasca University and the primary knowledge steward of the SpiritWiki knowledge ecosystem. He writes at The Peace Table and can be reached at [email protected].